It’s been 4 months and 20 days since I finished my military service, and I’ve tried as hard as I did 10 years ago to reach some short-term goals during this time. But life school, once again, gave me a lesson instead of a grade: to permanently remove toxic people from my life and not expect them to change. As a friend says, repetitive actions, even under the best conditions, yield repetitive results. If you want different outcomes, do new things (and with new people).

I don’t want to recall last year, the stress of being denied leave during the New Year, or the mourning of returning to that barracks afterward. The year before that, the 30 wasted days before service began, is also not something I want to dwell on. Let’s return to the New Year of 2015 (1394 in the Iranian calendar), one of my best New Years, the start of a fruitful year. Full of good feelings, professional successes, good deeds, good people.

I hope 2018 (1397) continues the spirit of 2015 and is full of positive experiences for me. A spring filled with the scent of flowers and blossoms, and memories it will create that I’ll never forget for years.